Everything I Ever Wanted
by Limegreen16
Summary: And even though he knows this is the life he'd worked so hard to get back, he can't escape the feeling that it's not the same. Post season 4 finale. What's life like for everyone after Michael gets back in? Warning:character death. Mike/Fi, less Jesse/Fi.


_Going back to Miami's too risky, Westen. You're back in now. You start tomorrow._

They weren't kidding, either. On his first night back in, they brief him on his mission (to gather information concerning the Libyan rebel forces) and refuse to let him anywhere near a phone. Heavily armed men guarding him. His first good meal. A prison-like room with no windows. And the guilt.

It's been more than a week since he'd been taken. He thinks of the life he is leaving behind. His mom—how disappointed would she be to find out he'd left without a word again? Sam, Jesse, Nate, his nephew. Fi. He wanted so badly to let them know that if he had a choice, he would have done things differently, said goodbye.

They send him into the thick of rebel headquarters in Benghazi. Just like old times. He studies the language, the culture, he immerses himself in this new cover as a shady American arms dealer, sends what intelligence he can gather back to D.C. They're his only contacts, now. They're watching him and he knows it.

And even though he knows this is the life he'd worked so hard to get back, he can't escape the feeling that _it's not the same_.

(He imagines Fi whisper it into his ear: _I told you so, Michael_.)

XXX

It's Jesse who gets news on Michael first.

After he gets back in, he realizes it's on everyone's minds. While he's telling Sam and Fi this, he turns to Fi and catches that glint of hurt in her stubborn eyes. turns away while Sam just grabs himself a beer.

Weeks pass. He finds himself itching to escape his desk. So he quits because he can't stand it, the politics and the bureaucracy, because all he really wants to do is help people like they used to. They pick up where they left off, the three of them without Michael. They never mention him anymore. He and Sam are especially careful not to rock that boat.

'They're probably banning outside communication,' he tells her one time. Sam is on a date with Mrs. Reynolds. 'After what happened. They're being careful.'

Fi looks at him with those glassy, intractable eyes. 'What would you do in his shoes?' she asks.

'I wouldn't listen to those sons of bitches.'

That's the first time they kiss— for real, this time. And he knows she's thinking of Michael, but he tells himself it'll ease off sooner or later.

XXX

Like a good friend, Sam takes it upon himself to pick up the pieces. He understands the life of a spy and its difficulties. You can't be in two places at once. And so he tries to keep everyone together, comforting Maddie and reassuring her Michael's probably just too busy to call.

'Yeah, right,' she snorts, lighting another one of her cigarettes.

Maddie smokes even more now, if that's possible. All of them have dinner together on Saturday nights, never mentioning the one person that brings them all together. Jesse moves back in too; he tells Maddie he can't find a good place to stay, but Sam knows _she_ _knows_ it's because they're worried about her.

And Fi. Well, what can he say? He caught her burning up Michael's old clothes and photos once, although he stayed back (he didn't want to join _that _pile), and waited until Fi'd gone before going in to see what he could salvage. Just a severely damaged photo of the two of them.

Makes sense.

XXX

Being with Jesse is being with an antithesis of Michael. He's more like her. They give into their emotions whereas Michael scrutinizes them and locks whatever is useless to him up. Jesse doesn't brush her aside when things get too heated, he hates lying, he's impulsive and he isn't that hard to read. It's quite refreshing, actually.

But there's no point in denying she's hurt by all this, and that, of course, she misses Michael—she finds herself going over and over their time together. Dublin, Berlin, Miami. If thoughts weren't bullet-proof, she'd probably shot them all already.

He knew this would happen. He tried to stay detached, but she had to push, and in some way this is as much her fault as it is his. She'd deluded herself with hope because there were bright moments in their otherwise grey relationship, like Michael calling her up to a hotel room, Michael shooting Strickler to save her, Michael saying he broke up with his ex-fiancée because he loved her. Damn him.

Now all that's left of him is a Welcome to Miami snowglobe, an empty loft nobody wants to rent, a Makarov and some awkward silences between Sam, Jesse, Maddie and her from time to time.

Everyday she tries to think about it less and less. He probably has forgotten all about them, anyway.

Fi packs a bag of ammunition for a new job they're on. Enough to scare some people off. Jesse comes by and loads her bags, only raising his eyebrow slightly about the amount she's packing. She likes that about him. He trusts her instincts.

'Ready to go?' he asks, putting his hands on her bare shoulders. She looks up. The sky is white hot, no wind.

'I'm itching to shoot at some scamming bastards, if that's what you're asking.'

And she kisses him, tiptoeing a little, her hands behind his neck.

'What was that for?' he asks, looking pleased anyway.

'I just felt like it.'

'Okay, then.' He hauls the last bag off into his car. 'I hope Sam's ready in position.'

Fi pauses while they're loading the car. She has a strange feeling she is being watched, for some reason, and she can't put her finger on it. She scans the background. Just some wire fences and bushes. Nobody knows about her storage facility here—it's where she keeps her heavy duty weapons and it's camouflaged in the middle of a forest.

Fi shrugs it off. Jesse is waiting in the car.

'Fi, you coming or what?'

XXX

Michael puts the binoculars down and tosses it into his car. He's seen enough.

He never expected her to wait for him, exactly, but he thought, he hoped she might. It was Fi, after all. They were always going in circles, they'd be angry at each other, fighting, and sooner or later she'd forgive him.

XXX

'Hey, Mikey, you could've given me the heads-up about you dropping by Miami,' Sam says cheerfully, taking the chair opposite him. As usual, there's a bottle of beer in his hand. He'd called Sam through a payphone a few minutes earlier to meet him at Carlitos.

'You look good, Sam.'

'Uh oh. What's wrong, Mikey?'

'Nothing.'

'Sure.' Sam drinks his beer, while Michael stares right ahead of him. 'So how long will you be in town for?'

'Not long. I'm just passing by.' He pauses. 'How's my mom doing?'

'Well, Mike, you missed her birthday last week. She was expecting a call, at the very least. But otherwise she's fine. Jesse moved back in, except now he stays at the guest room instead of the garage.'

Michael grimaces. 'I'm on a short leash right now, Sam. They're monitoring everything I'm doing down to bathroom breaks. They're hell bent on cutting me off from everything else.'

'I get it, brother.'

'Listen, Sam, do me a favor. Don't tell anyone I was here. Especially her. It'll just complicate things for her, and she doesn't really—doesn't really need stuff like this in her life anymore.'

Sam sips his beer and raises an eyebrow. 'Are we still talking about your mom here?'

'Yeah,' he says softly. Sam hands him a burned photo of him and Fi in Dublin, part of a series they'd taken in a photo booth at a weekend carnival. When he was still Michael McBride. How young they both looked then, and naïve and in love. He inserts it into his inner pocket. 'Thanks, Sam.'

They talk—well, mostly Sam talks, about Mrs. Reynolds and odd jobs they've picked up since he left, this last case they just wrapped up, playing Bingo with his mom. He's glad they're doing well enough without him.

XXX

Michael breaks into the loft after meeting with Sam, who leaves to be with Ms. Reynolds. It's dusty and grimy, his things (the ones Fi didn't burn anyway) are strewn everywhere. The place is stripped of all his emergency guns. There are a lot of memories here.

He is not supposed to be here, he thinks. It's irresponsible to let himself be so sentimental. He's a spy again, just like he always wanted.

'You weren't going to come and see me, weren't you, Michael.'

He freezes. 'Fi?'

'Sam was acting weird. I followed him.'

'I'm sorry, Fi.'

'For what?'

'I don't know.'

She shakes her head. 'You don't know,' she echoes.

He clears his throat. 'I saw you earlier. With Jesse?'

He is leaning against the counter, moonlight streaming from behind him and illuminating Fi, who is sitting on the staircase. She looks as beautiful as ever. His chest tightens.

'I'm not going to explain myself,' she says stubbornly. 'You left, I got lonely and Jesse—he's a good guy, Michael.'

'I know.' He hates this distance between them, this awkwardness. 'I was just surprised, that's all.'

'Oh, come on. You've been gone for two years now. Don't tell me _Michael Westen_ hasn't found a beautiful woman somewhere in the Baltics or—'

'Fi, I don't need to go to the Baltics for that.'

She smiles. He feels his insides churn, but he mirrors her expression, a ghost of a smile if it isn't the real thing.

'I used imagine coming back to Miami, sometimes,' he half-lies, because it shouldn't be _sometimes _(_every night _is more like it, but it sounds pathetic). 'My mom yelling at me for leaving like that. Sam buying drinks, and you never speaking to me again. '

'I was considering blowing your head off.'

'Why don't you?'

'I don't know. I guess I'm not as angry as I should be at you anymore,' she says, but he would rather she was that angry. He didn't know how to deal with this Fi. She didn't seem thrilled to see him at all, and that stung. 'We were just too different, Michael. And you did warn me, plenty of times. I just thought that when it came down to it, you might choose us—choose me—over your old job.'

Does he explain to her again how being burned put everyone he loved in danger? She won't buy it. She knows better: it was about his pride, his addiction to his lifestyle even though he could get himself killed at any second. They're not here for explanations.

He doesn't know how it happens—he's given up long ago trying to figure everything out—but he tries to kiss her, and when he does she obliges, for a while. Then she stops him. A finger between their lips. He searches her eyes for an explanation.

'I'm with Jesse now, Michael. I can't do this.'

XXX

The more she thinks about it, the more convinced she is it was the right decision. It would never have changed him. And she has a good life here with Jesse, a stable one, one she always wanted with Michael.

She knew she had to stop before she couldn't anymore, and so she did, and she saw too the hurt in his eyes. Fiona had to look away. She didn't want him reading her.

'Fi, I—'

She shook her head. 'It's okay, Michael. We're no good at this,' she said, and then leaning forward slightly to kiss him on the cheek.

And then she left, just like that.

They'd come full circle, she thought. It was she who left this time, and Michael finally knew how it felt to have been her those years ago in Dublin.

It was the last time she ever saw him. If she'd known it then, she probably would have kissed him longer.

XXX

Michael Westen died trying to save a woman and her baby from a firefight, and he was shot by friendly fire. Jesse thinks this is ironic. When he tells the news to Fiona, her body starts to tremble, her lips, her eyes, and he puts into perspective that _this is the man she loved for years_.

Jesse isn't naïve. He doesn't think Fi will ever really get over Michael, just like Michael never really got over Fi, either. He knows about their little rendezvous a year back. And he pretends he didn't—they all pretend they didn't know Michael had been in town, truth be told—because he respected them both. What they had. . .It was different, private. Nobody else in the world would be able to understand what it really was. And he knew better than to intrude. But he loves her too, and maybe now she'll have a true shot at moving on.

He can give her the life she's always wanted, he tells himself.

'My buddies said this was found in his pocket,' he says, offering it to her. 'I thought you might want it.'

A half burned photo of Michael and Fi together. She takes it from him and he puts his arms around her, she's shaking, and a second later she is storming out of her apartment to God-knows-where.

XXX

In his final moments, there were three things that flitted through Michael's mind as he bled to death next to some abandoned shack. Bullets in his chest. There was no way they could get to him in time. He was already losing consciousness.

One, he had finally met his match. He'd evaded death for so long he could feel it laughing in his face, being killed this way.

Two, the photo in the inside of his jacket. He put a bloody hand over it, closed his eyes, tears streaming down his face. He would never see them again. He would never see her again.

Three, how nice it might be in Miami this time of the year.

XXX

**First Burn Notice fic! I know it's long but I hope it was worth it. Fingers crossed. :) REVIEW PLEASE! So I know if I should do future stories too.**


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